Erik is a baseball fan who has been attending baseball games and snagging baseballs regularly since 2008.

4-11-10 Citi Field

I made my first trip to Citi Field in New York on Sunday. The goal was to snag one ball to extend my consecutive game streak with at least one ball snagged to 100.

I woke up at 6:45 AM in Philadelphia, left my hotel about 7:20, and was in New York City just shy of two hours later. This was the first time I had driven to New York City, so I didn’t know the ins and outs of where to park, so I parked in a stadium lot for $19. I was the first car in the entire lot.

I took a few pictures of the exterior of Citi Field from the parking lot:I told Capps that we missed him in Pittsburgh. When they finished up, Burnett had the ball and tossed me ball #5 on the day.The Nationals batting practice was just brutal. Very few home runs were hit into the stands, and I ended batting practice with five balls.

At one point during the bore-fest, I took a video of the Nationals batting practice which you can view below: (at least the Mets have good taste in music)

The game began, and I went to my seat in the upper deck (after being kicked out of the section behind the Nationals dugout).

In the first inning, I saw one of the more exciting plays I’d seen in awhile. Josh Willingham hit a ball off the wall with the bases loaded. Immediately, I said, “That’s a grand slam.” In the upper deck, I could see the ball was clearly to the right of the home run line. The umpires missed the call, and we got an instant replay review.Since the umpires let the play go, I got to see Adam Dunn bowl over the catcher, and then watch Willingham get thrown out trying to stretch the play into an in the park Grand Slam.

Of course, the umpires got the call right, and much to Mets’ fans dismay, Willingham was awarded his grand slam.

You can watch the play below if you’re into excited bases clearing hits:Click here.

After a couple innings, I went exploring and took a few pictures of the concourse:

View from the upper deck:Walking towards the right field foul pole:Right field corner concourse:Walking towards the Shea Bridge, under the Pepsi deck in right field:The Shea Bridge:View from behind the center field seats:Food court area behind the center field score board:Under the left field deck:Left field corner:Main concourse behind home plate, near the Jackie Robinson rotunda:And the pearl of Citi Field, the Jackie Robinson rotunda:I only stayed about half of the game, because I needed to try and get home before 10 PM, as I had to be up for work the next day.

Here’s the five balls I snagged:And the sweet spots:Goodbye Citi Field, for now.

Nice story. Saw the Nats/Mets twice in spring training at Pt. St. Lucie – didn’t get any Mets balls (they stopped BP by the time we were let in) so no idea what balls they were using. Got a Nats ball at each game – MLB Training Balls (!) The outfield berm at PSL has a 4-to-6 foot “moat” between the outfield wall and the berm fence, so most HR balls fall into no-man’s land – oddly a lot of “ground rule BP doubles” clear both fences on the hop.
On the commemoratives topic, I got a Twins BP ball at Clearwater vs. the Phils and they were using the Metrodome specials …

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